I LIBRiRY OF CONGRESS. I 

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|f ha P • fw¥>i | f » I 

f UNITED STATES OF AMERICA f 



A Summer Vacation. 



jTaur Sermons* 

BY 

EDWARD E. HALE. 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF SOME WHO HEARD THEM. 




BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

EDWARD E. HALE, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CAMBRIDGE! 
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



I. 

WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 

It is more than four months since I have spoken 
in public ; a longer intermission from that pleasure 
than I have known before in thirty years. From 
a regular life in the varied duties of the ministry I 
have, by your kindness, been relieved for this time, 
with the opportunity to see. the methods of the 
lives of other men, some of other races of the 
world. 

It is almost of course to say that, to a man whose 
life has been all woven in with the offices of Public 
Worship at home, the Public Worship of the men 
and women of different races has been a matter 
of central interest abroad. 1 And so easy is travel 

1 Mr. Emerson says, somewhere, that any intelligent traveljer 
will of course study with the utmost care the public worship of 
the countries which he visits, as in every regard necessary to his 
knowledge of the people. I wish all the travellers I know proved 
themselves " intelligent " by this standard. 



4 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



now, — so little time is lost in the mere transit, and 
so much gained for the centres, — that in as short 
a time as I stayed in Europe I found I could see a 
good deal of the various methods, at least, of the 
various Christian churches. It is of that variety 
of service that I propose to speak to you to-day. 

I landed in Liverpool on a Saturday, and the 
next day went with my companions to the service 
of the Hope St. Chapel, one of the oldest and 
largest of the Unitarian congregations of England, 
formerly under the charge of Dr. Martineau. We 
had hoped to find in the pulpit the minister of 
the church, our friend, Mr. Williams, for so many 
years my invaluable assistant here. He was absent 
for the day, but his place was well filled by a gen- 
tleman who had, just now, left the Church of Eng- 
land for the greater freedom of our communion. 
It was a pleasant thing for us to begin our expe- 
rience of Europe with so grateful an omen as the 
union in the Lord's Supper with a large congrega- 
tion of friends, of whom we knew no one by name, 
but with whom we were perfectly at home. 

On the afternoon of the same day, I was at the 
chapel of the Liverpool Poor-house, — a city within 
a city. In the very heart of Liverpool, here is a 
settlement, enclosed in high brick walls, of 6,000 
people. The chapel is sacred ground indeed, for 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



5 



it was the home of the ministry of Agnes Jones, 
well known as one of the saints to many of you. 
The service is that of the Church of England. 

The next Sunday, in London, I heard Stopford 
Brooke, one of the bravest and most eloquent of 
the preachers of the Church of England, in his 
masterly review of the life and character of Stuart 
Mill. On the evening of the same day, I was one 
of some 3,000 persons who joined in the majestic 
" Nave Service," as it is called, in Westminster 
Abbey. The immense building is all thrown open 
to the throng, and the throng accepts the invita- 
tion. Of all services of religion in which I joined 
in Europe, this was the most remarkable ; and I 
will speak of it in detail, in a moment. 

Leaving England soon after, I had opportunities 
on the continent of joining with Scotch Presbyte- 
rians in their service ; with French Protestants in 
theirs ; again and again with the Roman Catholics 
in theirs ; with the scattered members of the Greek 
Church in theirs. I met a little company of Tran- 
sylvanian Unitarians at Pesth, and was at one with 
them in the earnestness of prayer offered in the 
musical language which I did not understand. I 
witnessed the extraordinary service of the Fete 
Dieu at Vienna, in which the Emperor of Austria 
joins personally, with every high official of that 
nation. 



6 A SUMMER VACATION. 

On the other hand, side by side with Professor 
Friedrich, — who will prove perhaps the Luther 
of our claj 7 -, — I was present in the service of utter 
protest against Eome of the Reformed Catholics, 
who call themselves the " Old Catholics," or the 
" Pure Catholics." Again at Zurich I heard 
Lange, whose name is hardly known among us, 
but who is called the most eloquent preacher in 
Switzerland ; and I can well believe that the praise 
is deserved. I heard him called the " Theodore 
Parker of Switzerland," and the vividness and 
earnestness of his address were not unworthy of 
that name. Once and again I joined in the wor- 
ship of the Unitarian and Episcopal chapels ; and 
at last had an opportunity to hear Dr. Stanley 
preach in Westminster Abbey. 

Of all which I speak in such detail, not because 
the detail is of interest or importance, but because 
it illustrates the diversity of religious service in 
our time, as the most intelligent people in the 
world sustain it and carry it forward, and because 
it shows how far my experience gives me any right 
to illustrate from new observations my subject of 
to-day, — the various methods of Christian wor- 
ship. I think I have seen the best the Roman 
Church can administer ; certainly I have seen the 
best of the Reformed Catholic Church ; I am told 
I have seen the most remarkable congregation of 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



7 



the German and the French Protestants; I believe 
I have seen the most imposing service of the 
Church of England. It is these four methods of 
service, and the principles beneath them, that I 
now propose to compare. 

I. I speak of what is known as the Old Cath- 
olic service. This is the worship of those Catholics 
who have broken from the Church of Eome, in 
protest against the claim for infallibility of the 
Pope. While they take the name of Old Catholics, 
their movement is wholly new. 

On a lovely summer morning in the city of 
Munich, which may be called the centre of this 
movement, I found with some difficulty the hum- 
ble place of their worship. As if one had gone 
from Boston to Grove Hall in Dorchester, and had 
found there a little church, built long ago, and left 
by some accident to any one who needed it, we 
found the little Church of St. Nicolas, outside the 
city of Munich, where the Old Catholics assem- 
bled. It would not hold more than two or three 
hundred people in both its chapels, and it was 
crowded full. 

We had made a mistake in seeking it, so that 
we were late at service. As I entered, I saw the 
familiar altar, tabernacle, and gilded cross of the 
Catholic ritual. A priest clothed in white silk, 



8 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



with a gilded cross embroidered on his robe, was 
on Ms knees, and a little boy with a white gown 
behind him. The assembly, kneeling, held their 
several books of devotion, and were silently read- 
ing their own prayers, just as they would read 
them in any Roman service. But what I should 
not have found there, and what arrested attention 
first of all, was a simple German hymn, sung in a 
loud voice with perfect distinctness by a singer in 
the gallery above me, — a hymn of simple invo- 
cation to God, claiming his blessing on this meet- 
ing of his children. It was as the key-note of the 
harmony of the worship of the people below. The 
priest, upon his knees, was reading inaudibly the 
Latin service of prayer which belonged to him 
in the office of the day. The people, on their 
knees, were reading inaudibly their several prayers 
in the different books of devotion which the zeal 
of the Catholic Church provides for its worship- 
pers. And this sonorous, reverent, simple hymn, 
verse after verse, seemed to hold the worship of 
us all in harmony. 

The office of the Mass followed, — so far as I 
could see, with no variation from the office in the 
Roman Catholic Church, but that when the priest 
read Gospel, Psalm, or other Scriptures, he read the 
Latin words, with no pretence that the people were 
to hear. He lifted his open hand over the book, 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



9 



as if to show that he was reading, but he uttered 
no sound. It was as much as to say, — what per- 
haps had been said, — " Let us silently unite in 
the reading of God's word." It seemed as if they 
were resolved to sweep away all that they could 
sweep away of worship or ritual in an unknown 
tongue. 

He elevated the Host, or held it before the 
kneeling congregation, as any Catholic priest 
would do. Then, when they and he prayed 
together, they joined in the Lord's prayer in the 
German language. They used, however, some of 
the formulae, to which long usage had accustomed 
them, of the Latin service-book, such as " Deus 
Vobiscum," for " The Lord be with you," and 
" Oremus," for " Let us pray." Once and again, 
as they read their separate devotions, the German 
hymn by one single voice was sung, as at the begin- 
ning. And this service was all. 

In an earlier service, an earnest sermon had 
been preached, from the text, " The harvest is 
great, but the laborers are few," on the demand 
of our time for the simple truth of religion. But 
in the service in which I joined there was no 
sermon. 

This simple service united a congregation of 
people desperately in earnest. It was their sign 
of protest against that church which in their coun- 
1* 



10 



A BUMMER VACATION. 



try is the only exponent of religion. By joining 
in it, they excommunicated themselves from her 
offices of comfort and instruction. Their bodies 
may not be buried in her consecrated grounds. 
Their children may not be baptized in her baptism. 
Their men and women may not be married by her 
authority. They throw away, for the privilege of 
such worship, all that prestige or fashion or habit 
or authority can give them. It was the sense of 
such sacrifice which made a service so simple to 
be a service so grand. 

The history of this protest is simple. Since the 
Jesuit body was founded, three hundred and thirty 
years ago, the Jesuit party in the Church of Eome 
have sought for the closer centralization of its power. 
We can conceive of a secret society existing in 
America in Washington's time, which should stead- 
ily try to enlarge the President's power, and to 
humiliate and reduce the power of the several 
States. We can conceive such a society gaining 
point after point in such centralization, till at the 
end of three centuries they should enact in a great 
council that no appeal should be taken from any 
decision of the President in things political. Just 
such a party has been the Jesuit Society in the 
Church of Rome. And at last, in the General Coun- 
cil of 1870, they voted the " Infallibility of the 
Pope," by which they mean that in things ecclesi- 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



11 



astical no appeal shall be taken from his authority. 
Every regular bishop of the Roman Church — more 
than one thousand are they in all — has at last 
yielded to pressure, and assented to this decree. 
But many priests, many professors learned in the 
history of the Church, and many, many laymen, 
have protested. It is their protest which has set 
on foot the Old Catholic worship which I have 
tried to describe. 

II. In utter contrast with this service of sim- 
plicity was the festival of the Fete Dieu which I 
witnessed in Vienna. I dare not say I joined in it, 
though I always try to join in faithful worship wher- 
ever I find it. In most Catholic countries this cere- 
mony is one of the most brilliant of the calendar, that 
to which public attention is most called ; and in Vi- 
enna the dignity of the celebration is traditional. 
The festival is devoted to the commemoration of 
that article of the church which teaches that the 
humanity of our Saviour is really and substantially 
present in the host consecrated at the mass, and 
preserved in the tabernacle at the altar. To this 
ceremony, " Corpus Christi day," the u Day of the 
Body of Christ," is consecrated. 

At Vienna all business is set aside to make place 
for it ; certain streets are set apart for the great 
ecclesiastical and military procession which honors 



12 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



it. In these streets a footwalk of boards is laid for 
the use of the procession. At the cross streets 
scaffolds of seats are erected for the accommodation 
of those who are to see the spectacle. Every win- 
dow which commands it is engaged long before the 
sacred day. 

At seven in the morning, the Emperor and all 
the high officers of court, the imperial family and 
all the organizations of the clergy, all charitable 
associations and the elite corps of the army, render 
themselves at the appointed stations for divine 
service. When this is over, the great procession 
is formed, under the most brilliant military escort 
which can be selected from an army of eight hun- 
dred thousand men. The children of the orphan 
asylums, the priests of every uniform, join in the 
procession. Beginning with little boys who can 
hardly walk, their order closes with venerable old 
men — who from reason of age can hardly walk — 
who hold one or another of the high ecclesias- 
tical dignities. A moment more, and the Emperor 
and his suite follow, like the others all on foot. 
Behind are the various military and chivalric or- 
ders, in uniforms whose costly gorgeousness is, to 
an American, wholly new and marvellous. Every 
order of honor, gained in the field or in the court, 
blazes in diamonds and emeralds on the breasts of 
these noblemen as they go by. Priest, soldier, 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



13 



noblernan, and Emperor, — each man bears a long 
lighted candle as he walks. 

From the square in front of the great cathedral 
church this procession moves. It makes four 
pauses on its way, while in four public squares 
the selected lessons from four gospels are read. 
When the fourth gospel has been read the great 
ceremony is at an end. 

Like every other service of the Catholic Church, 
it is a service which the clergy and their associates 
perform, and where the common people, the laity, 
look on. 

There is nothing unkind in calling it a perform- 
ance. It is a function, the fulfilling a duty by 
officials. And a part of that duty is that the people, 
as such, shall not join. This radical separation 
between the people and their officers is essential 
in the Roman Catholic system. 

It was to me a sad commentary on all religious 
rituals that, while I was in Austria and Hungary, 
though I asked one and another person what this 
ceremony represented or was for, no man whom I 
asked, as it happened, could tell me. The explana- 
tion which I have given to you, — which is the true 
one, — that it commemorates the doctrine of the 
real presence of Christ's body in the sacrament, 
was not known to one person with whom I met. 
I learned it myself from books, long after I left 



14 



A BUMMER VAC AT I OX. 



Vienna. And, as it happened, among all the 
people who witnessed this ceremony, I met no 
person, however accomplished otherwise, of any 
nation, who knew what it was all for. A sad 
enough commentary, I say, upon all observances 
and forms. So easily does the form become an 
idol, a mere doll or image, — so easily does the 
idea represented die out in careless forgetfnl- 
ness. 

I am glad that I have seen the Emperor of 
Austria and the Archbishop of Vienna and the 
Commander-in-chief of the army of Austria carry 
lighted candles through the streets of her capital ; 
for I am sure that in the hue of imposing pageantry 
that church can never show me any ceremony more 
brilliantly arranged. 

I do not know what the priests who managed this 
ceremony thought of it or said of it. I was told that 
one-half the real estate of the city of Vienna is in 
their hands ; so large influence, at the least, have they 
in its counsels. But I spoke with no man of that 
country who did not take pains to tell me that this 
was a relic of the past. I know not how many 
people bade me observe that the Empress did not 
appear in the ceremonial. I know not how many 
persons criticised bitterly its cost to the state, at a 
time of severe financial embarrassment. Nor were 
these critics professed Protestants. It seemed as if 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



15 



all persons who met with strangers in Vienna were 
anxious to persuade them that this ceremonial did 
not represent the feeling of the Vienna of to-day. 

III. Less than a month afterwards I was in the 
city of Zurich. In many things Zurich reminded 
me of our own city of Worcester, which my friend, 
Mr. Frisbie Hoar, calls the model city of the world. 
Zurich would challenge the statement, and with 
some reason. Zurich is a town of some 50,000 
people, given to manufacture and to education, as 
Worcester is. It is a wide-awake town, which has 
been under eager Protestant influence since the 
Reformation began. For twelve years it was the 
head-quarters of the reformer Zwingle, and they 
show with great pride his autographs, his church 
and pulpit, and other memorials of his ministry. 
In a thousand ways it shows that intensity of life 
which to radical Protestantism belongs. From 
what I know to-day, I think I should recommend 
any young man who wished to study the applica- 
tion of science in art abroad to go to the Tech- 
nological College at Zurich. In this city there were 
but 1,000 Roman Catholics in a population of fifty 
times their number. And so infected were they 
by the national life that, when the Edict of Infal- 
libility • was proclaimed three years ago, they as 
a body deserted the Church of Rome, and allied 



16 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



themselves to the Reform Catholic movement 
which I have described. 

I was in Zurich on Sunday, and, as I said, had 
an opportunity to hear Lange preach, — the most 
popular preacher in Switzerland. The church in- 
side had a resemblance fairly ludicrous to the old 
country meeting-house of a large old New England 
town. I always thought that the folding seat in 
the pew, which gave room to the worshipper to 
stand in praj^er, and which bad boys slammed 
down too hard when prayer was done, was a 
Yankee invention. But this also I found, hun- 
dreds of years old, in Switzerland. A large 
congregation filled the church. What is very 
unusual in Protestant or in Catholic Europe, at 
least half this company were men. A part of a 
hymn was sung by the whole congregation, not so 
well as we here can sing our congregational hymn 
when we are in the spirit of it, much better than 
we do sing it when we do not care. The sermon 
was from the text, " Every one that hath forsaken 
houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, 
• or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, 
shall receive a hundred-fold, and shall inherit ever- 
lasting life. 9 ' 

It was wholly extempore. They called it there 
very radical. In some points you would have 
called it so ; in some points you would have said 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



17 



it was queerly old-fashioned. On the whole, the 
doctrine did not seem to me as latitudinarian as 
that which you are used to hear on Sundays. Xor 
is this a matter of so much consequence. AVhat 
was of consequence — the only thing which is ever 
of first-rate importance in preaching, — was that 
the preacher was through and through in earnest, 
— utterly and tremendously in earnest. He in- 
spired the congregation, and carried them with him 
from beginning to end. A short prayer after the 
sermon, and the last half of the hymn of which 
we had already used the beginning, and the service 
was ended. 

As we walked down the hill, two American 
. gentlemen with whom I was, who knew Germany 
well, said to me: " Now you will go home and 
think and say that this animated and excited ser- 
vice exhibits the spirit and eagerness of the Prot- 
estant church on the continent.*' They knew 
this was the first Protestant city I had seen on the 
continent. " Very well,*' I said, " is not this a fair 
exhibition ? " And I was told that it was quite 
exceptional. I was told that all through Prussia 
and Northern Germany, where the Eeformation 
won its first victories, and where the government 
conducts the churches now, somewhat as with us 
the government conducts the schools, the religious 
service does not attract the people. I was told 



18 



A BUMMER VACATION. 



that tie churches are empty, the preaching dull, 
the service ghastly and unreal. I was told that 
the spirit, enthusiasm, the large attendance, and 
the close attention of the congregation which had 
surrounded me, were due wholly to the fact that 
Lange was accounted a brave man, ready to break 
loose from the traditions. As a Zurich shop- 
keeper said, the people went to hear him, " because 
Lange had something to say." 

If then we took a lesson from that experience 
only, it would be that eloquent preaching from the 
lips of a man utterly in earnest is essential for the 
interest in worship of a Protestant assembly. And 
you will find a great many people who say that 
thing. But that theory is all wrong. The wel- 
come given to it is demoralizing to the church, for 
it makes religious service dependent on eloquence, 
which is only one sort of intellectual force. Now 
religious service really has roots much deeper 
down than any which are fed by the mere drip- 
pings of eloquence, be the speaker who you 
please. 

IV. Let me illustrate this by describing the oc- 
casion when I was one of three thousand people 
who joined in the service of Westminster Abbey. 

Every Sunday evening they throw open the 
whole of that magnificent ancient church for wor- 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



19 



ship. They crowd seats into every part of it from 
which the pulpit can be seen, and, where there 
are no seats, the people crowd in and stand. The 
great organ of the Abbey is used, and the full 
cathedral service with the antiphonal chant of the 
English Church. From the great columns of the 
church are hung great cards, on which is printed in 
large letters the hymn which the people are to sing. 

The service was the Evening; Service of the 
Church of England. I am not very fond of that 
service. I agree entirely with those influential 
men in her own communion who think it could be 
greatly improved, made shorter and more flexible. 
But none the less did I feel at once the grandeur 
and the humility of that occasion, when three 
thousand people joined together in the worship, — 
joined personally in it, from the beginning to the 
end. I say joined personally. I mean that to 
each person, or for each person, the service was 
intelligible, so that it was his own fault if he did 
not join in it. It is not simply that three thou- 
sand people make the responses, though that is a 
noble symbol of their union ; but it is that the 
belief is such and the language is such that three 
thousand people can join in them. The priest is 
again one of the people, offering prayer as one 
of the people ; no longer an intermediate officer, 
as in the Roman Church, — an officer whom they 



20 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



are to look upon offering prayer for them in some 
language they cannot understand. The service is 
their service, in which they join : it is not a spec- 
tacle on which they are invited to gaze. And I 
will not pretend to describe the satisfaction of 
joining in service so grand as that which such a 
multitude renders in the English temple which 
has most of historical interest of any temple for 
men of our blood. Of course I could regret that 
the conservatism of England holds back that wor- 
ship to the forms established three centuries ago. 
Yet, for all that, what man would throw away the 
blessing — won by the blood and tears of three cen- 
turies ago, by martyrdom and agony — of praising 
God in our own language, with our own prayers, 
without a go-between, with one heart and with one 
soul, with so many thousands of our fellow-men ? 

Of these personal experiences I must say no 
more, perhaps have said too much already. Maybe 
a traveller always finds what he looks for. I have 
certainly found, in what I have seen of the Chris- 
tian worship of the Old World, the illustration of 
the principle on which we here are trying to con- 
duct Christian worship in the New. 

Not our experience only, but the experience of 
the world, shows that worship, when rendered by 
civilized and intelligent people, must keep pace in 



WOE SHIP IN EUROPE. 



21 



its methods and in its simplicity with their civil- 
ization and their intelligence. Woe to church or 
nation which tries, with conscious effort, to keep 
back its ritual to the sentiment or the intelligence 
of centuries gone by ! 

The various experiments in worship will come 
out in the confirmation of the old broad statement, 
— old as eternity and broad as eternity, — that we 
are to love the Lord our God with all our heart 
and with all our mind, and with all our soul and 
with all our strength. 

With all our heart! Worship is matter of sen- 
timent. There is an original instinct which com- 
pels men to seek God and to thank God. And 
there are men who would make worship a matter 
of sentiment alone. But worship is more than 
a matter of sentiment. 

We must so worship God as to show that we 
love him with all our mind! Worship falls short 
and fails, when it is satisfied with any set form 
which is not large enough and elastic enough to 
give fit place for to-day's noblest convictions, its 
strangest discoveries, its newest deductions. 

Then we must worship God so as to show that 
we love him with all our souls ! Whatever power 
Life has is to be consecrated, as well as that senti- 
mental yearning or that intellectual conviction. 
Life, and life more abundantly, — life which feeds 



22 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



itself from the fountain of life, — is to bring an 
offering in worship, and to seek new life in worship. 
So that those fail sadly whose worship shows only 
that their hearts are right or their minds con- 
vinced. 

And with all our strength we are to worship 
God. Worship is not a way-side matter, a circum- 
stance, an accident, to be resorted to on a holiday, 
when there is no business or no amusement. Wor- 
ship expresses man's relation to the God in whom 
he lives, in whom he moves, in whom he has his 
being. He is to gird himself for worship with 
his very best. He is to offer the most careful, the 
most thoughtful service. Let him never say that 
because God is satisfied with the beggar's plaint, 
he will be satisfied in his prosperity to offer the 
beggar's offering. Let him never rear to Mammon, 
to Mars, to Pallas, temples more grand than he 
rears to the living God. Science, art, wealth, let 
him consecrate them all. He is to worship God 
with all his strength ! 

And he worships not as a slave, but as a child. 
God's loving children come all together to " Our 
Father." They come because they are glad to 
come, not because they are forced to come. And 
God comes to join them, because he is glad to 
come, not because he has been bought to come. 
The ritual which satisfies men must express this 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 



23 



common birthright, in which they are " partakers 
of the Divine nature." 

I do not pretend to say how far the different 
rituals I have described answered one or another 
of these requisitions. 

I will say this, that of the Roman Church, at 
the one extreme, the great mistake is that only 
the priests are the worshippers, and that the 
assembly of the people are only spectators. They 
are even separated by high railings in some places 
from the sacred few who are rendering homage. 
In all churches they are separated by the use of a 
language which they do not understand. And this 
separation is intentional. On the theory of that 
church, the priest bears the prayers of the people. 
This worship may be hearty, or may not be : it is 
not the worship of all the mind, of all the soul, or 
all the strength. It is not intelligent worship, it 
is not living worship, it is not strong. 

At the opposite extreme is the hard dialectic, — 
the argument and instruction of the dogmatic 
Protestant churches. They say that men are 
saved when they are convinced of a certain 
dogma, and are burned in eternal fire if they 
be not convinced. So when they meet, every 
moment is spent on argument for conviction. 
Worship almost dies out from such argumenta- 



24 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



tion. The service may be a service of the mind. 
It does not show that men love God with all 
their heart and all their soul and all their 
strength. 

It is our duty in this church, my friends, — let it 
be our hope and prayer in this new winter, — that 
we may escape both these errors. Let us all wor- 
ship here, each for each, and each for all. Let us 
join together, — men, women, and children, — ■ in 
one common offering. Let us bring here the heart's 
gratitude for every blessing, the heart's agony in 
every bereavement, the heart's yearning question- 
ing in every doubt. 

Let us bring here as well, and let us consecrate, 
all study, all observation of nature : let us gain 
the eternal blessing on our conversation, on music, 
and all other fine arts, on our business and our 
politics. Xothing shall be outside the range of 
our worship. We will worship with all our 
minds ! 

And for this we will offer not only David's de- 
votions, but our own ; we will speak not only the 
Bible language, but the language of to-day. A 
living service, and not a dead sacrifice, is what we 
have to offer. We must worship with all our 
souls ! 

And all this means and requires that worship, 



WORSHIP IN EUROPE. 25 



the love of God, and the constant recurrence to 
God shall be central in all life. We will not buy 
or sell without prayer. We will not eat or drink 
without prayer. We will not vote, or write, or 
read, or go on a journey, without prayer. While 
we bring every interest to God in prayer, we will 
seek God's help for every duty. We will worship 
with all our strength. 

Oh! if we succeed in such high resolves, here 
will be ritual such as no Ambrose or Gregory ever 
set in order, such as no canons or orders of litur- 
gy ever arranged. This will be the house of God 
and the very gate of heaven. 



2 



II. 

THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 

Whatever may be the historical origin of that 
strange description of the dispersion of the races of 
men which we find in the book of Genesis,— 
whether the narrative be the wreck of some poem 
misunderstood, or the mythical relic of some bit of 
history for ever unknown, — that dispersion, and 
the diversity of men's languages and races are the 
key to human history, until in the life of Jesus 
Christ the world was made again. And, on the 
other hand, from the time of Jesus Christ to this 
hour, and to the end, the law of human history is 
precisely reversed. The union of the races of men, 
by processes over-riding and compelling the diver- 
sities of race and of language, is, from that moment, 
the princip]e of human destiny. It is this distinc- 
tion which makes the radical and absolute difference 
between Ancient History and Modern History, — 
between what we call the Old Covenant and what 
we call the New Covenant, — between the Old 
Testament and the New Testament. Separation 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 



27 



is the law of the one, union is the law of the 
other. 

" They were scattered abroad " is the motto of 
the one : 

" God hath made of one blood all nations of the 
world " is the motto of the other. 

Eternal war, or peace gained only by force of 
arms, is the basis of the history of the first. Eter- 
nal peace — and this peace gained by mutual help, 
man helping man, and race helping race — is the 
principle of the other. It strikes the key-note of 
its victories. 

There is, undoubtedly, a great deal of the Old 
Life, or what was called life, left, mixed up in the 
New World. There is a great deal of Fetichism 
or idolatry in our customs, a great deal of heathen- 
ism in our law, a great deal of polytheism in our 
theology and religion. For all that there is, side 
by side with these, a great deal of Christianity. 
What there is, works its victories from hour to 
hour, and binds the nations closer. And it happens 
sometimes that it makes a display so striking as to 
compel attention, — a display indeed which plants 
one more milestone on the highway of its progress. 

Such a display has been the great International 
Exhibition made this year at the city of Vienna, of 



28 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



the results of the mechanics, inventions, fine 
art, commerce, and the processes of education and 
of social improvement in the world. Among the 
great tournaments of our modern chivalry, of which 
Prince Albert's Great Exhibition in 1851 was the 
first, this is, for many reasons, the most remark- 
able. 

It is, in the first place, remarkable that this ex- 
hibition took place when it did and where it did. 
The empire of Austria has not been thought to be 
the special champion of progress. Till a very late 
period, the government of that empire has been 
overawed by the Jesuit fraternity; a body of men 
whose gigantic power has always been directed in 
opposition to human progress, to true science, and 
to the real happiness of men. The Austrian empire 
has so lately emancipated itself from this control, 
that the great Exhibition of this year will be looked 
upon hi history as the type or monument of its 
emancipation. For the same reason, the city of 
Vienna, the capital of what since Charlemagne's 
day has been the " Eastern Realm" of Europe, 
seems a strange place for one of the central gather- 
ing places of the world. " So much out of the way 
you know :" this was the flippant remark which I 
heard, since I came from Vienna, from one of the 
thoughtless children of a conceited education. And 
that flippant phrase expressed, I have no doubt, 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 



29 



the popular impression of the other careless people 
of Europe and of America. 

Now the truth is that the world is round ; and if 
every man, for his own purposes, is in the middle 
of the world, — as in fact he is, — so is every other 
man, for his purposes. If the Exhibition of Vienna 
had only taught this truth to the jealousy of Eng- 
land, the vanity of France, the arrogance of Prus- 
sia, and the conceit of America, the lesson would 
have been well worth the cost. The Pharisees of 
Jerusalem had an old text in Ezekiel, from which 
they proved that Jerusalem was the centre of the 
world. There is a queer scrap of an Athenian 
geographer, in which he says, it is clear that there 
are no lands on the other side of the world, be- 
cause Athens and Attica are not peopled, and why 
should the gods make lands without population 
when Attica is not yet full ? Rome had and 
has her reasons for thinking that the threads and 
reins of power must centre in Rome. London, as 
she sees the wealth of the world flow through her 
exchange, persuades herself that she is the central 
ganglion of its circulation. And so, when you cross 
the water, you and I know one city which calls 
itself the metropolis of America ; we know twenty 
which prove on the map that they are at the terri- 
torial centre ; and one whose good-natured self- 



30 



A BUMMER VACATION. 



esteem is such that her genial humorist says she is 
at the " hub of the universe." 

This list of centres is enough to show that there 
is more than one centre. As we travel, the horizon 
changes, the circle changes, and the centre changes. 
The great Exhibition has taught the world some- 
thing worth teaching, when it has shown that one 
of these centres is Vienna. 

These are the relations in which it is truly- 
central. In Christendom it is central between the 
Roman Church and the Greek Church ; which latter 
Church we Western-bred people forget so often 
when we speak of " Christendom." The Empire of 
Russia ; the new Kingdom of Greece ; the Christians 
of Wallachia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Syria, and other 
Eastern countries whose names we hardly know, — 
are represented in the Exhibition, as they were not, 
and could not, be represented in London or in Paris 
on similar occasions. The majority of the Chris- 
tians of these countries belong to the Greek Church, 
whose Christianity, if it can claim nothing else, can 
claim to be the religion of the countries where the 
early victories of Christianity were w T on. 

Once more, Vienna is near enough the Mussul- 
man countries to call in representatives from them. 
The departments occupied by Turkey and by Egypt 
were among the most remarkable parts of the Exhi- 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 



31 



bition. You would see Turkish peasants, or life- 
like images of thern, as at work in their own 
costumes, grasping their own weapons or their 
own tools. Some of the darkest phrases in scripture 
become clear as one sees how a sheik's horn is 
exalted, or how a woman's face was veiled, or how 
two women ground together in one mill. It is a 
foolish habit of modern Christendom to forget Islam 
and the Mussulman nations ; but Vienna is so 
near them that they are not forgotten there. 

The very fact that Vienna was far east in Europe 
gave it thus a certain facility in welcoming to its 
great display contributions from what Europe calls 
the Levant, or the region of the rising sun. In this 
respect it is truly central. 

I suppose that this good fortune suggested to 
Baron Schwarz, the remarkable man who created 
and controlled the Exhibition, the idea of making 
it specially strong on its oriental side. Having 
gained the co-operation of Turkey and Egypt, he 
stretched his arms farther, and tried with success 
for Japan, for India, and for China. The new-born 
Japanese empire saw its great opportunity. The 
sagacious ministers of that country, much wiser 
than anybody we had here to attend to such affairs, 
arranged a complete exhibition of the interior life 
of Japan. You saw how a carpenter built, how a 
fisherman handled his nets, how a schoolmaster 



32 



A BUMMER VACATION. 



kept his school. You saw the interior of houses, 
their furniture and architecture. You saw the 
various manufactures, and the methods of those 
who made them. I am quite sure that many a 
traveller visits the ports of Japan and comes away 
ignorant of details of Japanese life, which could be 
learned in this admirable exhibition. Indeed, I 
believe that the Japanese department was the most 
skilfully collected and arranged, for the purposes of 
the Exhibition, of all the national departments. In 
the shows of other nations, individuals sent the 
articles which they wanted to advertise ; but in 
the Japanese display the government of Japan 
responded to the government of Austria by sending 
what tried to be a picture of the present social 
position of Japan. The Chinese government made 
a similar contribution, though by no means so care- 
fully and scientifically arranged. 

So far, then, as success goes, in bringing into Eu- 
rope some adequate exhibition of the resources and 
methods of the furthest East, and of the Eastern 
nation least known, the Vienna Exhibition may 
claim to have been central. 

Of the whole Exhibition the most remarkable 
feature, probably, to one who spent the summer 
there, was the exhibition of men. All the races of 
the world came to see ; not emperors and kings 
and the state alone, but leaders in art, in education, 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 33 



and in industry. I met men who were quite sure 
that the noblest result of the Exhibition would be 
the agreement among inventors and jurists on the 
principles of the international patent laws of the 
world. And there was an eager body of men at 
work, under the stimulus of countrymen of our 
own, who were engaged in that difficult problem. 
The interests of national education were in the 
hands of eighty or ninety representatives of differ- 
ent nations, who had given to that subject especial 
care. The department of fine arts, in itself a mu- 
seum of very great value and importance, had been 
collected with success not attained before, and, more 
and more, I believe, attracted the interest of the 
artists of Europe. Thus it happened that an intel- 
ligent visitor could not spend a day there without 
finding some new man who was worth knowing. 

And I am sure, that every day increased the 
respect of the intelligent visitor for the other 
countries of the world, and his sense of their im- 
portance to each other. ;i Let us have peace ! " 
This was the great lesson of the display. With a 
century of peace, the world would learn that Italy 
has no special privilege for art ; England none for 
machinery ; France none for fashions of manufac- 
ture. It would learn that while each can learn 
from others, each also has all original power within; 
that God has made one blood all nations of the 



34 



A SUMMER YACATIOX. 



world to dwell therein. Better than this, — give 
a hundred years of union, with Christian life and 
Christian love, and by the experiments of each 
nation each other would profit. The honesty of 
England, the facility of France, the steadiness of 
Germany, the grace of Italy, the fire of Hungary, 
and the freedom of America, all would help each 
other. " They help every one his neighbor, and 
every one says to his brother, Be of good courage. 
The carpenter encourages the goldsmith, and he 
that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth 
upon the anvil." 

I could not but observe, that while for the great 
solemnity of Corpus Christi day, which I have 
already tried to describe here, all business ceased, 
and all other life gave way to it, this Exhibition of 
the nations was open for its purposes through the 
whole day, as if that pageantry were not going 
forward ; as if the Exhibition belonged to another 
life, with which that ancient ceremony had no con- 
cern. And that day saw the largest assembly in 
the palace of the Exhibition of all the days from 
the beginning. Next to this day, Sundays were 
the most attractive days. 

This might mean nothing. But it is perfectly 
true that it was not the Jesuit community nor the 
Church of Rome which set in order the agencies 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION 



35 



which, made possible these triumphs of the human 
understanding, and the fancy of men. It was an 
earlier and simpler Christianity. Yes ! and it was 
an earlier and simpler Christianity which made 
possible the mutual dependence of race on race, 
and nation on nation which is here illustrated. 

The Christian religion, because it is the univer- 
sal religion, undertakes from the beginning to 
unite the races of mankind. The earliest words 
speak of this union, — " Peace on earth ; good-will 
among men." We have traced, a hundred times, 
the suggestion of this union in the gospels ; Jesus 
is born in an Asiatic state, which is under bondage 
of a European power, and in the peril of his early 
life he is carried into Africa. The Lord of the 
three continents, — the very omens of his childhood 
show that his life is to be tied to all. And so at 
his death, — when Asiatic bigotry has accused, and 
European tyranny has sentenced him, — it is on the 
shoulders of an African that the cross is borne on 
which he is to die. At the day of Pentecost, Asia, 
Europe, and Africa are represented in the throng 
which is addressed by the first preachers ; and, as 
soon as they go out, the first conversions recorded 
are those of the European Cornelius, the Asiatic 
Samaritans, and the African treasurer of the queen 
of Ethiopia. The Gospel of Matthew is written in 
Syriac, for Asiatics ; the Gospel of Mark in Alexan- 



36 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



Aria, the university city of northern Africa ; the 
Gospel of Luke, it is said, for special use in Rome, 
the capital of Europe. Hints all are these, to which 
hundreds more might be added, of the claim which 
the new faith made to universal empire, even when 
it was in its cradle. And that claim has never for 
an instant been abandoned. 

It requires only the most elementary study of 
history to know what was the leaven in the disor- 
ganized masses of the world, which as it fermented 
gave to them harmony, symmetry, shape, and order. 
It was the work of brave men and women who 
obeyed the great injunction : " They went out into 
all the world determined to preach the gospel to 
every creature.' 5 The new life went from the Medi- 
terranean out into the dark forests of the North ; 
and in their turn the dark forests of the North sent 
back a stronger and purer race of men to displace 
the worn-out tribes of the Mediterranean. The 
work of the Christian missions, — of men who were 
ignorant, if you please, of modern science, but who 
were faithful to an idea — that work organized 
modern Europe, and made possible the interchange 
of men, of manufacture, of literature, of mutual 
help, which is the commerce of to-day. And that 
work, which made Europe Europe, is going on this 
day in the out-lying continents of the world. I 
believe that the missions of to-day conceal men 



THE VIE XX A EXHIB1TI0X. 



37 



and women among their workers who are doing 
for the future of Asia and of Africa just what the 
great missionaries of history did for northern and 
western Europe. It is easy to point out mistakes 
in modern missions. I suppose it is as true now as 
it was in the beginning, that not many learned are 
called to the execution of the work they have in 
hand. But I listen with awe and reverence to a 
statement so confidently made as that which was 
made by Dr. Nathaniel Clark last year, after his 
review of the missionary work of our century : " If 
you will give us another half-century of such blun- 
dering, said he, in 1922 the Bible shall be in the 
easy command of every human being in this world, 
in his own language." To have the Bible is not to 
have every thing. But the agencies that carry 
the Bible there will carry a great deal more. 
They are not to be spoken of in any criticism, as if 
the Church had abated one whit from the spirit 
or the energy of the missionary zeal of the days 
of Gregory or of Bernard. 

Meanwhile, the missionary zeal has created and 
rendered possible other agencies for the bringing 
in of the kingdom of God, of which Paul and Bar- 
nabas and Thomas, and the other missionaries of 
the beginning, knew nothing. 

It is this body of agencies which is so magnifi- 
cently illustrated in the Exhibition at Vienna. 



38 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



When your Christian missionary lands at New 
Zealand or in Greenland, it is not the Bible that he 
carries with him which commands respect, it is the 
signs and wonders which he has at his command. 
The gun with which he kills his game, the iron 
harpoon and lance with which he strikes the seal, 
these are his credentials. The men who make these 
things must be superior men, and must have the 
superior secrets. The savage leaps to that correct 
conclusion by a very short logic. In one word, that 
conclusion is this, u The men who work these won- 
ders have the true idea." For the savage knows, 
what every one knows who is not a fool, that it is 
the idea, it is the Spiritual Principle which gives 
life and victory. 

That same lesson is repeated when a missionary in 
Pontus or Phrygia or Pamphylia runs her Wheeler 
and Wilson machine in presence of the wondering 
suite of the Pacha of the province. There is not one 
of those officers but asks himself > " Why is it that 
Christendom sends to us these marvels ? Why does 
not Islam produce them ? What is the blight on Is- 
pahan and Bagdad, and Cairo and Stamboul ? " One 
of our own writers on political economy has said 
truly, that the importation of a bale of long-cloths 
into Russia was the introduction of a missionary as 
dangerous to the Emperor as the introduction of a 
volume of Tom Paine's Rights of Man. There is 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 39 



no doubt of it. The bale of sheetings or shirtings, 
the sewing-machine, the mower and the reaper, 
whatever tends to lift dull labor into cheerful 
work, to make man less a brute and more a child 
of a creating God. — all these importations are so 
many Christian missions, for they all tend to make 
men live more by the idea, and for it, more by and 
for faith, which is the evidence of things unseen. 

It is such missions as these, supplementary to 
the spoken Word, and making for it its miracles of 
illustration, which are at this day giving to Chris- 
tendom its victories the world over. The noble 
merchant, the cunning inventor, the patient ma- 
chinist builds better than he knows. The man 
who makes two blades of grass grow where one 
grew before, is the man who to-day breaks the loaf 
of bread, and the small fishes, which the fisher-boy 
has brought so that the multitude may be fed. The 
man who opens a highway over mountain or desert 
says to whole nations that have been paralyzed, 
" Take up your bed and walk." M Greater things 
than these shall ye do ! " It is not in vain that 
such wonders as these are wrought before the 
nations. It is not in vain that in these great 
solemnities of the nations they are exhibited. The 
work of Babel is undone : and the scattered peoples, 
speaking a thousand languages, find that they are 
of one blood, children of one God, and, by a har- 



40 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



niony which is irresistible, that they are to be 
drawn together. 

Let us never take the conceit that such missionary 
work as this, for the union of the world, is lesser 
work than the spoken word of prophet or of apostle. 
There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. 
It may be that it is the special province of us New- 
Englanders, to subdue the world to God, by such 
m work of our right hands, rather than by the word 
of prophecy. It may be that you young men of 
this generation, are to continue the work of your 
fathers, when " they vexed each ocean with their 
fisheries," when they lighted the first fires of civili- 
zation beyond the mountains ; when they taught 
the southerner how to harvest his cotton ; when 
they launched the first steamboat on the Ohio, and 
when their pilots on the north-western coast showed 
the hidden channels to the Russian explorers. If 
that is the province which God assigns to you 
boys, see that you are worthy of such great assign- 
ment, and that in that province you do your work 
well. The cloth, rightly woven, the file truly cut, 
the oil perfectly clarified, the ship wisely modelled, 
nay, the rivet precisely turned, — these also are 
Christian missionaries, and have their divine worth, 
like the words of apostleship ; these also carry the 
life of light over the world. 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 



41 



In the whole history of this church of ours, it 
has so happened that no one of its young men has 
ever entered into the Christian pulpit, into what 
men call the Christian ministry. We send our 
boys and our girls to every land, on every 
duty but this duty. They are mechanics ; they are 
teachers ; they are merchants ; they are sailors ; 
they are physicians ; they are naturalists ; they 
are lawyers ; but they are not preachers. Very 
well. So they carry with them, whether in their 
file-cutting or in their heaving of the log, the 
eternal truth ; so they make the Spirit of God 
evident to those with whom they have to do, — they 
also are in the noblest apostleship. I do not know 
what region of the world is not the better for the 
presence of these missionaries of ours. When I 
looked my last, a few days ago, on the face of one 
of the oldest members of this congregation, who 
had carried his manly honor into the dealings of a 
life in the China trade ; when I reflected on the 
steadfast lessons of integrity and courage which 
that man had taught for a quarter century there, — 
I could not ask for grander ministry. It is for you, 
boys and girls, it is for you, young men and women, 
to pledge yourselves, this very minute, before your 
God, to like apostleship in this next half-century 
which is before you. This church perhaps is not to 
send out its preachers, its Eliots, its Brainerds, its 



42 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



Judsons. Very well : let it send out its Christian 
school-mistresses and school-masters, its Christian 
builders and mechanics, its Christian merchants 
and seamen, its Christian naturalists, artists, bank- 
ers, engineers, statesmen, and lawyers. Let it send 
out its Roscoes, its Lawrences, its Nightingales, its 
Arnolds. There are more than one hundred and 
twenty of us, and we have not to hide our gospel 
in upper chambers, as had the hundred and twenty 
who began. With the work of our hands, and the 
patient travel of our feet, and the tenderness of 
our hearts, as well as with the eloquence of the 
tongue, it is ours to go out into all the world 
and proclaim the gospel of God's Son to every 
creature. 



III. 



PILGRIMAGES. 

Five hundred men, women, and children, headed 
by the nobleman of oldest title in England, have 
made a pilgrimage since this month began, from 
the city of London to the sacred village in France 
where a sick girl saw the vision of the Sacred 
Heart, as if that place were more sacred than the 
palace or the hovel of their homes. Yet the 
Saviour, whom these people acknowledge, says to 
them, " The kingdom of God is within you." 

And God's kingdom, remember, is God's home. 
God's home is within you ! Yet, for all that, 
Christendom sees to-day a million discontented 
hearts, a million lives of men and women who are 
jealous, surly, all cast down, because they cannot 
come here and be happy, or go there and be happy, 
as Lady Jane is happy, or as the Baron of Weiss- 
nicht-Wo is happy, or as Tom or Dick are happy. 
When I measure my place against any other man's 
place, jealous of the society or companionship 
which he enjoys, it is because I do not know, or 



44 



A SUMMER VAC A I 10 X. 



do not understand that the kingdom of God is 
within me. 

'•The kingdom of God is within me!" And 
Christendom has been proclaiming it every day 
since Jesus proclaimed it. And he proclaimed it. 
as it would seem, a hundred times every day in 
his short life. It was, in fact, the only thing he 
did proclaim. 44 Neither shall ye say, Lo here, 
nor Lo there.'* Christendom proclaims that also ! 
If only Christendom could manage to live up to 
the proclamation. Yet when it comes to that, 
why, every Cardinal wants to reign in the Vatican, 
and I am afraid that most bishops would be glad to 
be cardinals, and that most priests would gladly 
be bishops ; the sailor would be a merchant, as 
Horace says, and the merchant would be a soldier, 
and the soldier would be a sailor. The place 
where a man is seems still to him the wrong place. 
And yet it is the home of the living God ; the 
kingdom of God. That kingdom of God is within 
you ! 

I can understand how it is that a savage, living 
in fioiit with hunger, with cold, or with savage 
men, should believe that the kingdom of God is 
far away from this earth, and that this earth is the 
kingdom of devils : of the fiends of war, of hunger, 
of cold, or of fire. I understand why he places 



PILGRIMAGES. 



45 



Olympus, or the home of God, far beyond the 
clouds, where all is serene ; or far beneath, in Ely- 
sium, where this clamor and havoc rouse no echo. 
And I have read enough of Mahomet's Bible, of 
the Koran, to know that there are descriptions, 
highly wrought indeed, of a certain heaven beyond 
this world, bright with jewels and flowers, where is 
enough to eat and drink, and that of the choicest ; 
into which heaven the evils of this world do not 
enter. I can understand how a man whose religion 
has been forced upon him in the forms of that 
book, how an Islamite, thinks he must die out of 
this world to enter into the kingdom of God. But 
I find, nearer home, other men and women who 
believe, or say they believe, the same thing. I 
find the teachers and books of Christendom teach- 
ing the same thing. There are hymns in this 
hymn-book, which seem to mean nothing, unless 
they mean that God's special kingdom is some- 
where outside this world, and that his control of 
this world is much more limited, as it were, spas- 
modic and secondary. Why ! it is only within the 
last week that I have heard of a lovely friend of 
mine who is putting off this mortal and putting on 
immortality, who almost every day is harassed by 
one false comforter or another, who comes to visit 
her, with this conviction that she is going to enter 
God's kingdom when she dies, in some different 



46 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



sense and manner from that in which you and I 
will enter it, when we wake from sleep to-morrow. 
They come to tell her to get ready to go, to get 
ready for what they call " the change," as if she 
could be ready to go, unless she were ready to stay ! 
Thank God, she knows what they do not seem to 
know, that when people sa}^ " Go here or go 
there," she is not to heed them. She knows what 
they do not seem to know, that the kingdom of 
God is within her. Here is her King, and here is 
his heaven. He cannot be parted from her but by 
her rebellion. 

And this is no infrequent blunder in Christen- 
dom. To believe in God, or to rely on God, is the 
first necessity of life. Then to believe in God's 
kingdom ; to see, were it only in the glory of mid- 
night, or in the cadence of the sea, or in the per- 
fume of flowers, that God rules ; that all this 
wonderful symmetry and harmony and rhythm and 
order are his rule, and his kingdom : this also seems 
of course. One cannot, if he thinks, if he looks 
up or looks round, if he looks outside himself, 
— he cannot but know there is such a kingdom. 
Well ! in the midst of passion, of lust unsatisfied, 
of wild desire ungratified, or of a boy's ambitions 
defeated, some child of God, just starting on his 
manhood, sees that God has such an order, such a 
kingdom. He sees that there are systems in which 



PILGRIMAGES. 



47 



God is Ruler. And so, in some blessed reaction 
from lust; in some happy harmony of his being; in 
the luxurious omnipotence of youth, when every 
sense and pulse are in health and order, when 
every throb of the brain, and every thrill of the 
nerve, and every beat of the heart, are pure and 
right and in sympathy, he cries out within himself, 
because he is a child of God, " I also will live in 
God's kingdom.'* " I will serve devils no longer. 
I will serve lust no longer. I will worship myself 
no longer. I live with God and for God. God's 
child am I ? Then I seek my Father, and hence- 
forth I am in allegiance." And then, because he 
is modest, because he supposes that older men 
know what he does not know, that centuries must 
have told something about God which he cannot 
see with a boy's insight, nor fathom with a boy's 
understanding ; then he asks what he is to do, how 
he is to enrol himself in the army, how he is to be 
a fellow-laborer together with God, how he is to 
partake of God's nature, how he is to live in God's 
kingdom. And they tell him, that if he will be- 
lieve thus and so, and worship here and there, and 
do this and that, that, by and by, when he is three- 
score and ten, or by reason of strength is fourscore, 
then, when he shall be lucky enough at last to die 
out of a world, which they tell him is a vale of 
misery and away from God, — 



48 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



" Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way," 
they tell him, that then, if the eager love of God 
which elevates him now has not all paled out in 
such black wading in the slough of despond which 
they call mortal life, that then, because he has 
bought the ticket, he shall enter the kingdom of 
heaven. 

There was a young man, who was more for- 
tunate. He had, it is true, been bred in this 
Jewish fancy, and he came running down the road 
one day, to ask the Master of Life, " What shall I 
do, that I may inherit eternal life." And the 
Master said to him what he says to you and me, 
that this kingdom is no kingdom of the future, 
but the kingdom of this moment. It is here. " If 
you will enter into life now," he said, " keep the 
commandments now. Follow me now. Why, — 
4 The kingdom of God is within you ! ' " 

I find also that men suppose that the kingdom of 
God requires a great deal of their machinery, or 
what I may call their scaffolding. King William 
the Fourth wanted once, in a very eager mood, to 
go down to dissolve parliament. But your 
Majesty cannot go," said one of the court officers. 
" I cannot go ? Why ? " said the sailor king. " Be- 
cause we cannot find the Master of the Horse, and 
the state carriages cannot be got ready." The de- 
lay of that courtier illustrates the sort of hamper 



PILGRIMAGES. 



49 



and friction that comes in between people really 
eager to enter the kingdom, and their success. 
Somebody wants them to go in a court carriage 
into God's kingdom. The lesson to be taught to 
such somebodies is the lesson King William taught 
that courtier. " Is there no carriage of state ? 
Then call a cab ! " There is always a cab ready, 
or let man or woman go afoot ! The king won the 
hearty sympathy of England when he said this. 
And the lesson goes deeper than the dissolution of 
a parliament or the passage of a reform bill ! 

I remember when I made my first visit in South 
Carolina, I was talking to a Christian woman about 
the curse and sin of slavery. "Oh! I would so 
gladly see it at an end," she said, " if we could only 
organize all South Carolina into one great phalanx 
after the fashion of Fourier." She was willing to 
give her assent to the kingdom of God, with a 
condition precedent which was absolutely impos- 
sible, and which she knew was absolutely impos- 
sible. Afterwards, in the same history, some of us 
thought, what proved true, that the turning crisis 
of slavery or liberty in this country required the 
immediate pouring into Kansas of northern emi- 
grants. To send five thousand men there in one 
summer seemed a prime necessity. I remember 
that great effort was made to establish an emigrant 
office in the city of New York with this aim. 



50 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



And when I asked one day how the agent was suc- 
ceeding, I was told that, at the last accounts, he 
was discussing with a paper-hanger what was the 
proper tint of paper to be put on the wall of the 
company's office in Broadway. He thought that 
slavery could not be checked in Kansas unless his 
paper-hangings harmonized with his carpet. Well, 
those are all instances, of which there are thou- 
sands all the time, in matters of formal or theologi- 
cal religion, and in matters of practical or informal 
religion. The false notion involved leads up to the 
pretension of the Catholic Church, that I cannot 
enter the kingdom of heaven unless I take the 
direction of a father confessor, who has been or- 
dained by a bishop, who has been consecrated by a 
pope, who has been chosen by cardinals, who were 
named by other popes, who were chosen by other 
cardinals, so that they are the legitimate succes- 
sors to St. Peter. 

That noble philanthropist, Robert Owen, of New 
Lanark, established in that place a factory village, 
so remarkable for its contrast with the usual 
wretchedness and squalor of such places in Scot- 
land, that it was one of the wonders of the world. 
There were infant schools, and places to play, for 
the children ; there were nurses for the sick ; there 
were concerts and theatres and lectures for enter- 
tainment ; reading-rooms and libraries, and every- 



PILGRIMAGES. 



51 



body was prosperous, and everybody seemed happy. 
" This is very like the kingdom of God," people . 
said ; and it was a step that way, — a very distinct 
step that way ? And why was it a step that way ? 
Why, because here was one large-hearted, large- 
headed, full-handed child of God, who did not 
care about himself, but who cared for the rest. 
The kingdom of God was in his heart, and so God 
ruled in the village which was his home. But he 
himself even did not understand this. I do not 
think he understood to the day of his death that 
it was the infinite Spirit of Love, what the Bible 
calls the Holy Spirit, which directed those victo- 
ries. He really thought that if the world could 
be divided off into sections as large as New Lanark, 
of sixteen hundred people each, and each had its 
infant school, and sanitarium, and day schools, and 
library and reading-room ; its nurses, its doctors, 
and its teachers; if all the machinery of New 
Lanark were supplied, — that the cheerfulness and 
prosperity of New Lanark would appear the world 
over. 

And it was his constant disappointment that 
the world would not try the experiment. But 
the world had tried the experiment and knew what 
it was worth. Lecture-rooms enough in Boston 
to-day, school-rooms and libraries enough, nurses 
and teachers and doctors enough, machinery enough 



52 



A SUMMER YACATIOX. 



of all kinds ; but the machinery does not make the 
reign of God, — the kingdom of God. It is only 
the present Spirit of God which reigns in the king- 
dom of God ; and that Spirit is not in this piece 
of machinery nor in that piece, — it is not in New 
Lanark any more than it was in Gerizim. The 
kingdom of God is within yon. 

Do you remember the story of Rabia's pilgrim- 
age to Mecca? Rabia joined in the caravan of 
pilgrims. She crossed the sea ; she crossed the 
desert. Night brightened into day and day faded 
into night forty, fifty, sixty times ; until at last 
they came, with crowds of other worshippers, to 
the sacred city. And there Rabia bent in worship 
at the shrine, to learn what the Samaritan woman 
learned beneath the shadow of Gerizim, " Neither 
in this city, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall ye worship 
the Father.*' And Rabia rose, and returned wiser 
to her home, saying, — 

* Thou fool to tread the desert road, 
To toss upon the dreary sea, 
To come so far to seek thy God, 
Who always was so near to thee." 

I say all this now, because so many of us have 
come back from trying new experiments of life, 
and have just now to return to the old homes, and 
to see what new experiments we can try in them. 
I have seen how people live in Liverpool and 



PILGRIMAGES. 



53 



London, in Paris and Brussels, in Frankfort and 
Munich and Vienna and Pestli, in Zurich and on 
the high pastures of Switzerland. You have seen 
how people live in Swanipscott and Pigeon Cove, 
and Xantucket and Newport ; how they live in 
Woodstock, at Thornton and Bethlehem, at Wat- 
kin's Glen and Saratoga : how they live in Chicago 
and San Francisco and Sceattle. We have taken 
accounts of the methods of half of the world. 
Now, there are two ways in which this account 
may be used. We may, on the one hand, per- 
mit the splendor of other homes to make our 
homes seem squalid : or we may bring all their 
grandeur and freshness, all their peculiar charm 
and glory, into ours. I knew a man who never 
enjoyed his own little greenhouse after he had 
seen the wonder of the fern-houses and palm- 
houses of Kew ; and I know a woman who never 
sees fern-house or palm-house, never a gentian on 
the Alps or a lichen in Woodstock, but her own 
parlor is the prettier for some conquest of the laws 
of growth which she has made, and her own life 
the happier with what Mr. Choate calls, " a reflex 
and peculiar glory." 

It is wholly in our power to bring back from 
garden, museum, palace, wilderness, sea surf, or 
mountain prospect, new life for our lives, new 
glory for our homes, because those homes are the 



54 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



very kingdom of the living God when we choose 
to obey and enter into allegiance. I only care 
for one illustration of this to-day. Travel is 
useless unless it teaches the lesson of that illus- 
tration. A vacation is worse than dangerous 
unless, when it is over, we show that we have 
learned it. 

Robert Owen, or any man like Robert Owen, 
who thinks that the kingdom of heaven needs 
scaffolding or machinery, is quite wrong. It needs 
something ; but it needs no more than God puts 
within the reach of the humblest day-laborer. 
Machinery, scaffolding, gate of entrance, and in- 
fusing spirit are at every man's command, if he 
will. The most ignorant man, the most stupid, 
the poorest, may build this palace, so much nobler 
than Aladdin's, if he will; may enter it and dwell 
there. Here is the secret : " Where two or three 
are gathered together in my name, I am in the 
midst of you." That is a metaphor, of course ; 
but it is a metaphor which means that two or three 
so assembled might expect, and should enjoy, all 
that two or three of them would enjoy, if in their 
evening bivouac, or at their fisher's home, the 
Saviour himself came in, joined in their cheerful- 
ness, solved their doubts, strengthened resolution, 
and quickened life. Such two or three, joined 
together so, find out what the kingdom of God is, 



PILGRIMAGES. 



55 



and that it is not far away. They find out that 
the kingdom of God is "within them. 

We expect to find heaven, or the kingdom of 
God, in another world after we die. Reverently I 
hope that we shall. I believe that we shall. We 
expect that, as the world advances after one mil- 
lennium or more ; after the killing out of this pesti- 
lence ; after the abatement of that cruelty ; after 
the unlearning, by hard remedies, of such habits as 
tyranny, and priestcraft and avarice, and the 
methods of demagogues, the reign of Christ will 
come over this world, and the kingdom of heaven 
will be here. Reverently and bravely let us hold 
to that hope, and do our best to make it good. 
But do not let us be satisfied with these hopes. 
When we pray " Thy kingdom come. Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven," we are not to 
wait for any such millennium's end, or any such 
heaven after death, for the answer to our prayer. 
That prayer is answered in every happy and true 
home where two or three of us are together in a 
Saviour's spirit. Answered completely and brim- 
ful ! Heaven has no nobler gift. It has no more 
perfect delights. It has no closer walk with God. 
You made j^our pilgrimage to Mecca. You fell on 
your face on the desert, morning, noon, and night. 
But never was God any nearer to you than when 
you took your little boy upon your knee, and heard 



56 



A SUMMER VAC ATI OX. 



his long story through from the beginning to the 
end, shared his baby triumph completely, and let 
him feel to the very bottom the glory and perfect- 
ness of a father's love. You Trent to the chapel 
of the Vatican, and you were lost in the exquisite 
raptures of the Miserere. But Vatican and Mise- 
rere haye no raptures for you sweeter nor purer 
than the joy of uniting with your children, as young 
as they are, in their eyening amusements, if you so 
join and inspirit them, that they are all glorified to 
them because you share them. And all this is no 
out-of-the-way accident. It is not the entertain- 
ment of a yacation week, or of a day or two. It 
is what it is : it renews itself with a charm neyer 
twice the same, because it is a part of God's king- 
dom, and not a plan of man's devising. It is loye 
such as God's loye. It is life, quickened and made 
abundant by the eternal elixir. So is it that it 
does not weary, that it is always new, because 
simply it is always a part of God's own eternal 
plan for his children. Or, more simply, say, be- 
cause God is in the midst of you, enjoying your 
joy, and making your pleasure possible. 

To learn that there is no place to God, or that 
in all places we may haye his companionship, this 
is the first lesson of trayel or of adyenture. To 
come home, knowing what home is, his home 
as much as ours, — this, of such adyenture, is 



PILGRIMAGES. 



57 



the consecration ; a consecration and a lesson, I 
think, not unneedful in the habits of our time. 
The care of business, or the demands of even- 
iug society, separate fathers and mothers from 
sons and daughters. A very foolish and pro- 
vincial custom makes one party up of young 
people and another of old people-. But good 
society, the most amusing and instructive soci- 
ety, only exists, as God made it, where the young 
and the old, the graver and the gayer, meet 
together. I say, I think the habits of separation 
which sent a man to his office every evening, which 
kept the children by themselves for fear they 
should disturb their father, all need to be conse- 
crated and modified. A father is the best teacher 
to his girls. A mother is the best teacher to her 
boys. The boys and the girls are the best com- 
panions to their fathers and their mothers, and their 
fathers and mothers are the best companions to 
the boys and girls. Home, built up on the central 
principle which has disclosed these axioms, has 
capacities for amusement, for relaxation, for cheer- 
fulness, for reasonable instruction which are 
nowhere else : it is indeed alive with the infinite 
Spirit, and glows with infinite love. Such homes, 
thus inspired, will give to us what we have not yet 
discovered in any circle of wealth, of fashion, or of 
culture, — what we rightly call "good society." 
3* 



58 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



For good society is the society where each lives in 
the other's life, gives to each, and gains from each. 
It is a part of the kingdom of heaven. 

That kingdom is open to all of us, whether we 
live in a tenement on the seventh floor or in a pal- 
ace. The rooms are nothing. The inmates are all 
in all. Let them be gathered, though there are 
only two or three, so that they dare say they meet 
" in a Saviour's name ; " let them meet as he met 
with John, the beloved disciple, and in that pure 
companionship, lo the presence of the Father also ; 
his inspiration, his strength; and courage and cheer- 
fulness which he alone can give. The joy of abun- 
dant life is there : the heartiness of daily victory. 
For the kingdom of God is within you. 



IV. 



OPEN AIR AND THE ARYAN VIRTUES. 

If a great Christian prophet, wholly alive with 
the new life, came upon a colony of Benedictine 
monks, all at work from dawn to midnight study- 
ing the Scripture, copying it for posterity, and 
writing notes upon it, he would say to them : " Up 
and away. Leave this cloistered darkness. Come 
out on this hill-side. Thank God for the blue sky 
and the bright sun." And he would bid them 
from day to clay, put plough into the ground and 
harrow after the ploughing ; plant seed, and gather 
harvest. He would bid them fish in the rivers and 
hunt in the forests. In whatever way, he would 
break up their ascetic confinement, and bid them 
turn for so many hours of every day, from their 
study of written Scripture to the sight of God 
in his larger world. 

Suppose the same prophet suddenly landed on 
an island of the South Seas, too small for war, and 
ignorant of all the devices of the civilized world. 



60 A SUMMER VACATION. 

He finds a simple people, living on the spontaneous 
gifts of the earth ; the cocoa-nut, the taro, and other 
roots and fruits, are enough for them. They live 
under the open sun. They bathe for hours in the 
water. They are passionately fond of flowers. In 
their dances they are crowned with them, and at 
their feasts the table blazes with them. The word 
" labor " is unknown to them. The idea of mutual 
sacrifice is hardly known. And this prophet finds 
them intellectually asleep, nay, almost morally 
asleep. They enjoy physical life, and that is all. 
To such a company of men and women he would 
certainly read, from his Bible, of higher life than 
theirs, and nobler aims. He would interest them 
in this marvellous machinery of letters, by which 
the highest and best of one age and country take 
hold even of the most degraded and weakest of 
other ages and other countries. He would use 
such power as a Christian training and a Christian 
civilization had given him, power which they 
would certainly respect, till he had inoculated 
them also with an enthusiasm for books and letters. 
Even this would only be the machinery by which 
he would quicken them with new ideas, — ideas of 
spirit, principle, duty, and worship which they had 
never had before. And, in one word, he would 
consider himself faithless until he succeeded in 
quickening these simple children of out-door habits, 



OPEN AIR AXD ARYAN VIRTUES. 



61 



■with some measure of the very life which had sent 
all his Benedictines into their cloisters. And he 
would pray, and work, and expect that such life 
would result in a change of habits, which should 
make these men and women considerate and phil- 
osophical, no longer mere slaves of the impulse of 
the moment, but ready and able to govern them- 
selves by law. 

The prophet would be conscious all the time, 
that in each case his practice and his preaching 
were, in external form, precisely the reverse of 
what they were in the other. 

In both cases, of course, however, his object 
would be the same. It would be the great object 
which the church ought always to hold in mind, 
and every preacher of the church, — to present 
every one as a perfect man ; the whole spirit and 
soul and body preserved blameless, " according 
to the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ." 

The contrast between such habits of life is very 
much the contrast which St. Paul himself had to 
see once and again, as he passed from Jewish pre- 
cision as to texts and laws, into the license of such 
European races as the Gauls who had taken root 
in Galatia, or the sensual Greeks whom he found 



62 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



when he had crossed into Europe. It was to such 
people that he said, " The flesh lusteth against 
the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." His 
Master, even in the crisis of his life, had contrasted 
flesh and spirit, to ask the three Jews to gain 
more physical power. " The spirit is willing," he 
had said to them, " but the flesh is weak." He had 
intimated that a life in which a man could keep 
awake when he was on the watch was better than 
a life where even an affectionate disciple slept at 
his post. He would have been glad if Peter and 
James and John had more bodily strength ; if 
their bodies had been strong enough to do what 
their spirits devised. But with Paul all is differ- 
ent. Paul, coming up to these wild nature-wor- 
shippers in Galatia, finds only too much physical 
life. It amounts even to lust or license ; and he 
uses just the counter words, " The flesh lusteth 
against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, 
and these are contrary the one to the other, so that 
ye cannot do the things that ye would." And so, in 
every address of his to the Greek, who was of tem- 
perament a slave of external nature, or to the 
Roman, who, from the habit of centuries, believed 
first in force, and had little faith beside, the steady 
effort of the great apostle is to bring in Law, to 
bring in ideas, and by the spirit, and the new 
strength of the spirit, to enlarge and improve 



OPEN AIR AND ARYAN VIRTUES. 



CB 



what I had almost called the brute life of those 
who were governed by the impulse of the nature 
which was around them. And I may say, very 
simply, that substantially the same work has been 
the work of the church from his day to ours. 

This contrast between the Jewish teachers of 
Europe and the natural drift of the European races 
is so strong, that the habit has grown up of calling 
the races allied to the Jews the religious races of 
the world, and of saying that all our religions are 
of foreign origin. And so, in the various scepti- 
cisms of our time, quite a prominent place may be 
given to the notion, that all worship, thanksgiv- 
ing, right and wrong, — are well enough for a half- 
barbarous Semitic race, shut up in their deserts and 
studying their astronomy ; but that really we proud 
Europeans — " Indo-Europeans " or " Aryans, " 
whichever name may be most in fashion — need 
not trouble ourselves with such local superstitions. 
Now it is perfectly true that the historical origin 
of Judaism, of Christianity, and of Mahometan- 
ism, the three religions with which we have had 
most to do, has been among these men of the races 
allied to the Hebrews. That fact is too striking 
not to challenge attention. It is from the observa- 
tion of that fact that there springs a scepticism 
which sweeps so far. 

But, to that scepticism the immediate reply is 



64 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



here, — that while Judaism and Mahometanism, 
which are in strictness lout two types of the same 
system, belong in the race which sways the Arabian 
peninsula, and have never found energetic apostles 
outside that race, the Christian life instantly 
passed outside those narrow boundaries, and ad- 
dressed all sorts and conditions of men. And it is 
interesting to see that in the beginning it did not 
prosper in Jerusalem. It sought the wider range 
of the cosmopolitan cities of Antioch, Alexandria, 
Corinth, and Rome. It throve in the hands of a 
man like Paul, who was not afraid of Galatian and 
Greek, — who saw the charm and value of their 
flesh-born religion and their love of nature. He 
did but repeat the habit of his Master, who ad- 
dressed all his critical instructions to outsiders or 
outcasts, — Samaritans, Roman centurions, Edoni- 
ite prince, Syrophcenician beggar, settlers at Cesa- 
rea, Greeks who had come to the feast, — as if to 
show in Judaea itself that his work was outside 
Judaea. Christianity does not show itself as Christi- 
anity till we see that it is more than idealism, more 
than ascetic spiritualism, — that it is rather the 
only law in which is a union of bodily life, mental 
life, and spiritual life. It is the life in which the 
flesh and the spirit are for the first time balanced 
against each other. It is the life in which the flesh 
does not any longer lust against the spirit, and in 



OPEN AIR AND ART AX VIRTUES. 



65 



which the spirit does not lust against the flesh. It 
is the life in which the spirit is willing and the 
flesh is strong ; in which the flesh is willing and 
the spirit is strong, It is not the life which a 
Greek would describe of a Hercules of many 
labors, — strong to act and patient to endure. — 
but so stupid that any Proteus could outwit him 
or any Dejanira ensnare him ; but, on the other 
hand, is not a life such as one of the writers in the 
Apocrypha would describe of some God in a heaven 
of heavens, of a heaven above the heavens, — ig- 
norant of human passion, and unable to walk in 
human pathways. Rather is it the life which in 
the effort of human strength shows the divine 
omnipotence. It is the life in which every mus- 
cular struggle becomes divine, and every mental 
conception. It is the life of man, the child of God, 
or the life of God in man. 

I do not see any objection to the familiar state- 
ment, that the spiritual conceptions of an unseen 
God, of an infinite heaven, of eternal law. are what 
men call Asiatic or Semitic : nor to the other state- 
ment, that the sense of beauty, the love of nature, 
the out-door passion for stars and woods, for bathing 
in the sea and hunting on the land, for fruit and 
flowers, and in general for food, is European, or. as 
they say, Aryan or Japhetic. We of the European 

E 



66 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



races certainly have this credit, of being specially 
fond of nature and her gifts. We are spoken of as 
if we took at second-hand our poetry and philoso- 
phy, our morals and speculation, the sense of right 
and the sense of worship ; as if we took them some- 
what indirectly. Very well. If the Hebrew and 
Arab seers have given to us the loftiest statements 
of right and truth, our artists have given to them 
the noblest images of beauty. Not a statue nor a 
picture that has entranced the world has come 
from their workshops ; nor is there world-known 
symphony ; nay, nor the humblest strain of music 
which has travelled from their harps to cheer our 
homes. If David, when he sang to Homer there 
by the bay of Accho, charmed him into silence as 
he sang — 

" The Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, 
His praise endureth for all generations," 

Homer, on the other hand, enchanted David when 
he sang what David never sang, sang how 

..." the ocean billows, wave on wave, 
Are pushed along to the resounding shore 
Before the western wind, and first the surge 
Uplifts itself, and then against the land 
Dashes and roars, and round the headland peaks 
Tosses on high, and spouts its foam afar." 

The one poet sings the spirit which informs nat- 
ure : the other sings the nature which is inspired. 1 

1 The allusion is to " Homer and David, a piece of possible history." 



OPEN AIR AND ARYAN VIRTUES. 67 



Let us grant that for our purpose this distinction 
of races is accurate. But let us study it enough to 
see how our education at school, in church, and 
at home ; how our self-formation ; and, above all, 
how our worship, — shall bring out of the work 
and genius of both races the balance of the spirit 
with the flesh, — the perfect man, and the king- 
dom of God. 

And here the technical ecclesiastic is in terrible 
danger. And in fact, popes and councils of priests, 
colleges of clerks, and such people, given more to 
speculation like my Benedictines, and little to 
out-door life like my islanders, have done the 
world great damage. They have done this merely 
by a statement too small of what religion is. 
Very naturally, the man with great love of beauty 
is apt to be an artist ; the man who is wild about 
nature is apt to be a naturalist ; the student of 
force is apt to be an engineer ; the master of men 
is apt to be a soldier ; and so it is, that in history 
so great a majority of men who were remarkable 
for no one of these things in particular have been 
left to be clergymen and teachers. Delicate men, 
hectic men, who were going to die young ; unsocial 
and reserved men ; boys, called good boys, because 
fond of books and afraid of play, fond of rest and 
afraid of hunting and of war, — these have, for evi- 

LQFC, 



68 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



dent reasons, largely recruited the teacher's desk 
and the preacher's. The pupils, and the church, 
alas ! have had to suffer. And all the time the 
heresy has crept in, that a weak .body, and a mind 
not enterprising, would be the best recipients of 
the grace divine, — heresy more fatal than if Scrip- 
ture wrote that the pinchbeck shields of Rehoboam 
were nobler adornments to the temple than the 
rich gold of his father ! The church, haying taken 
its oracles, indeed, from the land of speculation 
and the ideal, has very naturally exaggerated the 
ideal and the speculative. And so, if you could 
believe the tracts and the sectarian newspapers, 
and the great body of the sermons and the books 
of religious biography, you would believe that an 
excursion into the forests was a profanation of 
Sunday ; you would believe that Michael Angelo's 
statue of Jesus was an unworthy memorial in God's 
Temple ; you would believe that on a bed of sick- 
ness a mail was nearer God than on the cricket-field 
or in a swimming-match. Nay, you would fall 
back upon Mussulman fanaticism, and your artists 
would no longer represent the exquisite loveliness 
of the thing which is, but would be left to devise 
something unreal and non-existent for the decora- 
tion of home and of God's temple. 

On the other hand, the church has made its great 
advances, and has won its true reforms, at the hands 



OPEN AIR AND ARYAN VIRTUES. 69 



of leaders who were something more than idealists 
or speculative, — such men as Paul, who could 
make tents as good as their sermons : such men as 
Bernard, who could lead a colony into the wilder- 
ness and hold a garrison there ; such men as 
Luther, who would have been a better miner than 
his father ; such men as Vincent de Paul, who 
was not afraid to blister his hands as he pulled at 
the galley oars ; and, shall I speak of our own times ? 
men of the double training of Bishop Selwyn and 
Frederic Robertson, and of Robert Collyer, men 
who know the worth of muscle as well as the 
worth of brain ; who have rightly seized and 
rightly taught the lessons of the flesh controlled 
by the spirit, and the spirit quickened by the 
flesh. 

The counter heresy — the one-sided depreciation 
of the beauty of the earth and the glory of the 
frame of man — may be called religion ; but it can- 
not be called Christianity. It is Judaism; it is 
Islamism ; it is good Calvinism, if you please ; it is 
ascetic Romanism : but it is not Christianity. I 
dread every sign of it which I see in the morbid 
side of our civilization. When I go to a school 
examination and see a pale boy, tall and thin, pass 
eagerly from black-board to black-board, chasing 
before him his reluctant equation, till in the end 
he extorts from it the truth which was in question, 



70 



A SUMMER VACATIOX. 



I always wish it were a man that were doing this. 
And for the boy, I wish he could be lving in wait 
for ducks on the Chelsea marshes, as his father did, 
or that he were trolling for blue fish between the 
Vineyard and Block Island. Of the old Boston of 
my boyhood, much is gone which was mean and 
unsavory. The flat where, on holidays, the outlaws 
pitched their coppers, is now the home of our gen- 
try ; and, in the dock where lay the humble wood- 
sloop from the Kennebec, we are now assembled 
together, that I may expound to you this gospel. 
But in that same change the boys have lost the 
hills and forests which were the holiday haunts of 
us fathers. I wish I thought that the gymnasium 
or the lifting-cure made up for the long tramp, the 
out-door picnic, the appetite which never quailed, 
and the sleep so fairly earned. I am sure that our 
danger is on the side of the neglect of the thou- 
sand thousand gifts which in forest and flood, in 
the outer world of beauty and sublimity, of wonder 
and mystery, God has given. Is it good for a boy 
to learn the multiplication table to the five-and~ 
twentieth figure ? So it is good for him to learn to 
sing " Bonnie Dundee" and the "Star-spangled 
Banner" and "Nearer, my God, to Thee," with 
the lungs of a savage rather than the mincing 
wheeze of a drawing-room. Is it good for a girl 
to illuminate the parable of the virgins ? Yes ; and 



OPEN AIR AND ARYAN VIRTUES. 



71 



it is just as good for her to learn how to swim out- 
side the headland beyond the breakers, to toss up 
and down on the ground-swell, and if need be to 
take back to land any other girl who is tired with 
her play. Is it good for a boy to know how to 
write a composition on the excellence of virtue? 
Yes ; and it is good for him also to know how to 
talk with a wood-cutter in the pine-lands ; how 
to strip to his skin as he talks, and from sunrise to 
sunset, to chop stoutly at his side. Is it good for 
a boy or girl to repeat the ten commandments from 
end to end ? Yes ; and it is as good for the boy to 
give his men the example of loyal work, the 
master caring for his laborer, so that they shall 
love him with a passionate enthusiasm, as young 
Firth led his men, so that they loved him with 
loyal devotion : it is as good for the girl to pull the 
stroke-oar bravely when there is a life-boat to be 
launched and a stranded crew to be rescued, as 
Grace Darling did when the call came to her : as 
Ida Lewis did when the call came to her ; and the 
Grace Darling without a name who did the same 
thing in our own harbor, just in the passage be- 
tween the Brewsters. 

The instances I have chosen are all instances of 
the Aryan virtues, — the virtues which die out of 
you unless in the culture of out ward nature you train 
this physical frame which is fit temple of the eternal 



72 



A BUMMER VACATION, 



God. Know ye not that the temple of God is holy, 
which temple ye are ! 

Nor do I find full corrective of these dangers in 
the country relaxation of the vacation season. I 
do see every cottage in the mountain crowded, and 
every fisherman's hut on the sea-shore. Bat in 
hotel, hut, and cottage I see many a sojourner who 
has gone there with no resource or occupation but 
those of the winter. She can neither walk nor 
ride, she knows nothing, and cares nothing for 
flower, lichen, or moss, for crystal or butterfly, 
for glow-worm or star. It is the eternal novel, 
as it was all last winter ; or the eternal German, 
as it was all last winter ; or the repetition of last 
winter's theatricals ; or the renewal of last winter's 
flirtations. It is not the life of nature, — the in- 
timacy with nature which it pretends to be, — 
the baptism with the elixir of life, which it ought 
to be ! 

And I may fairly say of the countless instances 
where people complain that religion has not ful- 
filled the promise, — has not done what it pretended 
to do, has been a broken reed indeed, — that in 
two such failures out of three, they have tried the 
Jewish, or the Mussulman, or the Calvinistic, or the 
Roman religion, and have not tried the Christian. 
They have sought a God who was in some holy of 



OPEN AIR AND ARYAN VIRTUES. 73 



holies, or in some heaven of heavens. They have 
not sought our Father, always at hand in the ex- - 
quisite and infinite bounties of his love. Then 
they send for a poor clergyman, and he finds 
a bereft widow, shall I say, who has shut her- 
self out from the sun and air, away from the 
world ; shut herself up with her ghastly ser- 
mons, and with Bible and prayer-book ; which 
in such surroundings are almost as weird and 
unreal. Then, as if she were the widow of 
Mausolus, self-buried in his monument, she chal- 
lenges the man of God to comfort her, and bids 
him " bring on his religion." Well, that man, if 
he be a servant of Jesus Christ, bids her consider 
the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air. He 
tells her frankly, that for that false life of the tomb 
there is no gospel and no comforter. He tells her, 
that to seclude herself in these finite appliances of 
mortality, is sedulously to cultivate death and its 
memories ; that it is not, and cannot be, till she 
will again measure herself against the infinite, see 
the love of God in his eternal displays of it, — listen 
to his gales and to his whispers, bask in his sun- 
shine, and learn the lesson of his tempests, — it is 
not, till she will go and seek him, that she has 
right to expect that he will find her. God is not 
the God of the dead, but of the living ! 

4 



74 



A SUMMER VACATION. 



The Aryan virtues ! The virtues of the savage, 
of the Saxon, of the Roman, of the Greek ! The 
virtues of a pure body, of the world of beauty, of 
the open heaven ! No incense of the cathedrals 
must ever be sweeter than the fresh air of morn- 
ing. No memories of scripture must ever be more 
wonderful than the present handwriting of the 
all-loving God. Worship itself, and thanksgiving, 
find, and have always found their sweetest and 
their noblest voices when men worshipped and gave 
thanks as the outlaw David did, or as Adam and 
Eve did in Eden, — 

" These are thy glorious gifts, Author of all." 

To use those gifts freely and with courage is the 
first act of homage. Has God given us the glory 
of morning, — marvellous with its infinite purples, 
its amethyst and pearl, and ruby and gold? the 
first act of praise is to look upon such marvels. 
Has he spread out the forest over the earth, — wave 
after wave, of varied color, shadowed and lighted 
under his fleeting clouds, so that never twice was 
the sight of it the same ? then man, who has been 
made viceroy of this world, ought at least to know 
the glory of such possessions. Is man himself given 
strength in every muscle, a foot to run, a hand to 
carve ; given eyes to see and ears to hear : made a 
child of God indeed, so that he can enter into work 



OPEN AIR AND ARYAN VIRTUES. 



75 



so wide and plan so varied? then the noblest 
knowledge of God will come in as he compasses 
God's plans. And for the centre of all life, which is 
communion with God, intimacy with him, — there 
is but one way to it, sure as it is simple. The pure 
in heart, thej^ see God. Those who speak to him, 
as his little children, hear sooner or later his reply. 
Those who look for his handwriting find it sooner 
or later. Those who listen for his voice find they 
are walking with him. And all this, in its best 
and highest, supposes not only the aspirations ot 
the spirit, but the use and the control of the body, 
and the enjoyment of the world. He that hath 
ears to hear, let him hear ! He that hath eyes to 
see, let him see ! He that hath feet to run, let him 
run ! He that hath voice to sing, let him sing ! 
He that hath his home in a paradise of beauty, let 
him walk with God, morning, noon, and evening, 
and in that paradise, where he finds, as he will find, 
the work of God unfinished, — let him with God 
be fellow-laborer. 



Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son. 



(S^V Kef — 



A Summer Vacation. 

jFour Sermons* 

BY 

EDWARD E. HALE. 



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